Syndicate Bank, OBC surge ahead of FM's meet on bank merger

NEW DELHI: Shares of select public sector banks rallied upto 7 per cent after media reports suggested that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is meeting chiefs of public sector lenders regarding a mega plan for merging multiple set of public sector banks.

The Finance Minister is also expected to brief the media about the meeting at 4 pm.

Syndicate Bank, Indian Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Corporation Bank are some of the banks that have been called for the meeting, the report added.

The Nifty PSU Bank index was trading 0.17 per cent down at 2445.40 around 02:12 pm.

Shares of Syndicate Bank (up 7.10 per cent), Jammu & Kashmir Bank (up 6.39 per cent) , Oriental Bank of Commerce (up 6.19 per cent) and Allahabad Bank (up 3.99 per cent) were the top index performers.

State Bank of India (down 1.69 per cent) , Union Bank of India (down 1.68 per cent), Bank of India (down 1.44 per cent) and Indian Bank (down 0.89 per cent) were trading with losses.

Benchmark NSE Nifty50 index was up 30.95 points at 10,979.25 while the BSE Sensex was up 125.13 points at 37,194.06.

Among the 50 stocks in the Nifty index, 27 were trading in the green, while 23 were in the red.

Shares of YES Bank, Vodafone Idea, SBI, SAIL, Tata Motors, Bank of Baroda, Dish TV India, JSPL, Ashok Leyland and NBCC were among the most traded shares on the NSE.